United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)
United Towns Organisation (UTO/FMCU) on behalf of the
World Associations of Cities and Local Authorities Coordination (WACLAC)
City-to-City Cooperation:
Issues Arising from Experience
An Interim Report
prepared as an input to discussions
on decentralised cooperation at the
IULA/UTO Unity Congress, Rio de Janeiro, 3-6 May 2001
and
on city-to-city cooperation at the
25th United Nations General Assembly Special Session (Istanbul+5)
New York, 6-8 June 2001
Nairobi, 25 May 2001
TABLE OF CONTENTS[NB Page nos to be added!]
Foreword
Chapter 1Background and Context
1.1The Idea of City-to-City Cooperation (C2C)
1.2C2C and Development Cooperation
Chapter 2The Purpose and Scope of the Report
2.1Advancing Understanding of C2C and Strengthening C2C Practice
2.2The Organising Framework of the Report
Chapter 3City Practices in City-to-City Cooperation
3.1Framework for Comparing City Practices
3.2Comparing City Practices by Geographic Orientation
3.3Comparing City Practices by Linking Modality
3.4Comparing City Practices by Participating Partners
3.5Comparing City Practices by Focus in the Urban Management Process
3.6Comparing City Practices by Thematic Focus
Chapter 4Support for City-to-City Cooperation
4.1Framework for Comparing C2C Support Options
4.2Comparing Support Options by Organisational Structure
4.3Comparing Support Options by Funding and Resources
4.4Comparing Support Options by Support Modality
Chapter 5Issues Arising from Experience
5.1Key Features and Trends in C2C Practice
5.2Key Features and Trends in C2C Support
Chapter 6The Way Forward
6.1Laying the Foundations
6.2Consulting among Key Partners
6.3Launching a C2C Forum
6.4Maintaining a C2C Information Base
Annex 1: Information Sources
Annex 2:International Associations and Networks of Cities and Local Authorities
(to follow)
Annex 3:National and International City-to-City Support Activities
(to follow)
FOREWORD
When, five years ago, the world met in Istanbul at the HABITAT II City Summit to discuss the enormous challenge posed by global urbanisation and our rapidly growing cities, they reached a number of historic agreements and enshrined them in the HabitatAgenda. The international community achieved a major break-through in collectively recognising the important role that cities play in social and economic development, as centres of productivity, innovation and advancement. A second major break-through lay in agreement on a collective strategy that is sharply focused on two high priority concerns: “sustainable human settlements” and “adequate shelter for all”. And a third major break-through was the forging of a new partnership approach involving not only central governments and civil society, but also local authorities in a joint plan for systematically addressing the future of the world’s cities and urban areas.
In addition, at Istanbul the United Nations recognised, for the first time, the status of local governments officially at one of its global meetings. This was yet another first, progress towards recognition of local governments as interlocutors with the United Nations, and their participation in the key decisions affecting and requiring cooperation from the cities. Indeed, local authorities were recognised as the closest partners of national governments for the implementation of the Habitat Agenda.
Given this context, it is not surprising that city-to-city cooperation or “decentralised cooperation”, practised by local authorities with the support of their associations for more than half a century, has in recent years become an important focus area for the United Nations. It has emerged in the past decade as a new technical cooperation paradigm of the United Nations, which emphasises the demand-led sharing of operational experience among practitioners, the exchange of know-how and mutual learning rather than the traditional provision of ready solutions.
Earlier this year, UNCHS (Habitat) agreed to co-operate with the United Towns Organisation (UTO) - the latter acting on behalf of World Associations of Cities and Local Authorities Coordination (WACLAC) and the Advisory Committee of Local Authorities (ACLA) - to support a series of events concerned with city-to-city cooperation. These events will emphasise the benefits of city-to-city learning and mutual support, highlight the broad range and diversity of city-to-city cooperation practices, showcase the variety of complementary options for supporting cities in their cooperation, and seek to draw and agree on forward-looking conclusions regarding opportunities to improve the scope for both city-to-city cooperation and support. The series of events will culminate with a parallel event on city-to-city cooperation during the Istanbul+5 United Nations General Assembly Special Session in New York on 7 June 2001.
By the time Istanbul +5 has concluded, there should be a solid foundation for jointly launching a more permanent forum on city-to-city cooperation, which will be in a position to continue expanding an inventory of the various forms of city-to-city cooperation as well as the modalities of international support including removal of legal constraints on city-to-city cooperation. This in turn will make it possible systematically to identify complementarities to be exploited, overlaps and redundancies to be avoided, and gaps to be filled - information which will be equally valuable for cities seeking to establish cooperation links and for organisations seeking to support cities’ cooperation initiatives.
The present report is an input to this series of events. Over time, it will provide a systematic guide to the full wide range of city-to-city cooperation activities. These activities differ in many important ways, reflecting the tremendous diversity of interests, purposes, institutions, resources, and situations among cities. The report addresses this complexity of patterns by providing an analytical framework which allows the full range of city-to-city practices, on the one hand, and support systems, on the other hand, to be described in a meaningful and comparable manner. This framework provides a rationale for organising and sharing information, in a way which facilitates a constructive exchange of experience as well as mutual learning among cities, their associations, and their partners in national governments and international institutions and in civil society.
An initial version of the report was presented to a special workshop session of the IULA/UTO Unity Congress in Rio, specifically to stimulate discussion and elicit responses and feedback. On the basis of reactions from Rio, and of other information received, the report has now been updated and printed for distribution at the Istanbul +5 Special Session of the United Nations in New York in June 2001. Still, the present report remains a “work in progress” which will be progressively refined and improved through continuing inputs of evidence and experience from cities and support organisations.
The report has been prepared by UNCHS (Habitat) in close collaboration with UTO (on behalf of WACLAC and ACLA). Under the overall coordination of Jochen Eigen, Ag. Chief of the Technical Advisory Branch of UNCHS (Habitat), the report was written by Paul N Bongers, Consultant and former Director of the Local Government International Bureau (UK), and Douglas McCallum, Consultant to Habitat’s Sustainable Cities Programme. The work was carried out in collaboration with Michel Bescond, Marcelo Nowersztern and David Bouanchaud of the United Towns Organisation, and with inputs from Jean-Pierre Elong Mbassi, Director of the Municipal Development Programme for Western and Central Africa, Nicholas You, coordinator of Habitat’s Best Practices Programme, and Jean-Christophe Adrian, coordinator of Habitat’s Localising Agenda 21 Programme.
We hope that the report will serve to inform, and to stimulate debate among, the participants at Istanbul +5. We are assuredly on the threshold of a new era in international cooperation for development, in which all levels of government and all civil society partners will be active participants. Intelligent application of the potential of city-to-city cooperation offers creative and powerful avenues for achieving sustainable development at the local level in both South and North.
Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka
Executive Director
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) /
Joan Clos
Mayor of Barcelona
President, World Associations of Cities and Local Authorities Coordination (WACLAC)
1. INTRODUCTION – BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
1.1 The Idea of City-to-City Cooperation
During the last two decades of the twentieth century cities have become active participants in international relations as never before – or at least since the Middle Ages, when Europe’s city states had more power than most of the national governments. Three reasons can be adduced for this. Firstly, urbanisation is a growing trend in all the developing countries, matching in some respects the rapid development of urban areas which characterised the first industrial revolution in the North. Secondly, globalisation has led to a clearer recognition of the determining position of cities in a world which is both interdependent and committed to sharing finite quantities of natural resources. And thirdly, city governments have taken initiatives to assert their place in the world and to develop international links which will contribute to their future economic and social well-being.
Cities and local authorities have been developing their international cooperation for many decades. The first international association of local authorities was set up as long ago as 1913, principally for the purpose of general information exchange and mutual support, and a small number of direct city-to-city links were established. But it was in the aftermath of the Second World War that direct links between local authorities of two or more countries really began to spread. Most of the early initiatives were among the developed countries of the North, but it was not long before the first links with developing countries began to be formed.
With the marked trends towards democratisation and decentralisation of the 1980s and 1990s, the scope for concrete cooperation between local authorities on practical issues of mutual interest expanded considerably. Moreover, cities were increasingly responding to their role in combating the root causes of poverty and fostering sustainable economic and social development, as the political entities closest to the needs of their communities. These advances at the local level coincided with the growing recognition in the international community that the process of urbanisation, particularly with the movement of population towards the cities of the developing countries, raised major issues of governance - as well as of economic, social and environmental policy – which called for new approaches to capacity-building at the local level.
Before taking this discussion any further forward, it is important to state that the terms ‘cities’ and ‘city-to-city cooperation’ will be used in this report without any preconceptions about the size or historical importance of the settlements concerned. Thus, the word ‘city’ will be used in the American English sense of an urban settlement or cluster of settlements of any size, with its own elected or appointed local government body, which may go under a whole range of administrative titles such as ‘municipality’, ‘township’, ‘town’, ‘borough’, ‘district’, ‘metropolitan area’ and so on in all possible language variants. The term ‘cities’ is also frequently used loosely in international contexts to refer to other types of local authorities such as ‘counties’, ‘provinces’, ‘departments’ etc, which exist at an intermediate level between the municipality and the state and may contain a number of larger or smaller urban settlements within their boundaries.
‘City-to-City Cooperation’ - neatly if inelegantly shortened to ‘C2C’ - thus becomes a portmanteau term to cover all possible forms of relationship between local authorities at any level in two or more countries which are collaborating together over matters of mutual interest, whether with or without external support. There is also a relevant dimension of cooperation between cities within a single country, but such cooperation takes many forms beyond that of development-oriented capacity-building which is the focus of this report. The term city-to-city cooperation is sometimes used synonymously with the term ‘decentralised cooperation’, although the latter concept (first embodied in the European Union’s Lomé Convention in 1990) embraces a wider range of actions for development carried out by ‘non-state actors’ and locally-based institutions and voluntary associations of all kinds. Decentralised cooperation policies are based upon the principle of partnership and joint working between public authorities, non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations, cooperatives, the private sector, and the informal sector, a principle which is increasingly being incorporated in C2C approaches.
1.2 City-to-City Cooperation and Development Cooperation
The inherent weaknesses of ‘top-down’ development cooperation programmes have become increasingly apparent in recent years. There has been a notable, though still incomplete, shift in development cooperation over urban issues away from the provision of ready-made solutions and textbook approaches through consultants and through outreach from the established western centres of expertise. Decentralised cooperation, whereby cities (and indeed other institutions) work together on defining their problems and devising appropriate solutions on the basis of shared experience among peer groups is increasingly recognised as a powerful means of advancing collective know-how. However, there are signs of a continuing confusion or mismatch between the facilities and services being provided through the international community and the needs and demands of the cities themselves. Thus a further move is indicated away from a supply-driven approach towards one based upon more effective understanding of demand and of the potential of the various agencies and intermediaries to meet such demand.
C2C may take place between cities in neighbouring countries or between cities at opposite ends of the globe. Town twinning provided the framework for the earliest examples of C2C, and some very productive cooperation continues to take place within that framework. But in recent years the practice and scope of C2C has widened considerably on the initiative of city leaders, with the encouragement and assistance of the international associations and networks of local authorities and with support from a growing number of national and international agencies. Strengthening the capacity of cities to deal with their own problems in close touch with their citizens is now an acknowledged international policy goal. Partnerships between cities are gaining recognition as a potentially cost-effective and sustainable component in achieving that goal. Cities are increasingly working together on topics affecting their responsibilities, enabling their personnel to exchange experience on a peer group basis and transferring and adapting successful practices to new contexts. Cities are also becoming increasingly involved as direct participants in international programmes addressing the problems of urbanisation and sustainable development.
There has thus been a notable convergence between the growth of C2C practices initiated by cities and the growing focus upon urban issues among the international institutions. The challenges of urbanisation and the roles of the various civil society stakeholders as partners in policy formation at local, national, regional and global levels were strongly underlined during the series of major United Nations conferences in the 1990s. This process started at the Rio Earth Summit 1992, and the Istanbul City Summit 1996 went much further in recognising that cities and local authorities, as the level of governance closest to the people, are essential partners of national governments and the international institutions in the processes of translating international agreements on economic, social and environmental issues into effective action on the ground. Agenda 21 adopted in Rio recognised that these global problems have their roots in local actions and that cities are thus key actors in the quest for sustainable development. The HabitatAgenda adopted in Istanbul underlined the role of cities in socio-economic development at local and national levels, and set out an extensive Global Plan of Action, drawn up in an evolving partnership with representatives of local authorities, for addressing the challenges of achieving sustainable human settlements development in an urbanising world.
In response to the trends and political developments outlined above, cities and local authorities have also taken significant initiatives of their own to define and project their role as partners in the international policy processes addressing urban issues. To take the place of the traditional top-down approaches, they have stated their wish to participate in drawing up the ground rules for future international programmes and to engage in sustained dialogue with the international community about development priorities and approaches. For this reason they sought, and were readily admitted to, active involvement throughout the HABITAT II Istanbul City Summit process. Through joint action by all the major international associations of cities, they convened the first World Assembly of Cities and Local Authorities on the eve of the Summit to draw up and project their collective policy input to the global debate.
As a direct follow-up to the City Summit a series of steps were taken to develop the dialogue between the UN and local government on the implementation of the HabitatAgenda. Local authorities’ representatives were enabled to participate in the proceedings of the Commission on Human Settlements and the Preparatory Committee for Istanbul + 5. In the context of a Memorandum of Understanding drawn up between UNCHS (Habitat) and WACLAC in 1997, joint work was initiated in a number of areas. More recently, the Executive Director of UNCHS (Habitat) was mandated by the UN Commission on Human Settlements to set up an Advisory Committee of Local Authorities to associate the cities and their associations still more closely with the development of Habitat’s policies and programmes.
Given these developments, both at the city level and at the international policy level, it seems timely to carry out a review of the current state of practice of C2C, to identify the lessons learned so far and to chart ways of extending and improving its implementation. This report represents the first step in that process, and the purpose and scope of the report are explained more fully in the next chapter.
2. THE PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF THE REPORT
2.1 Advancing Understanding of C2C and Strengthening C2C Practice
The fundamental purpose of this report is to provide a coherent framework for analysing the by now very wide range of forms in which cities (in the widest sense, as above) cooperate with one another, along with the support mechanisms which have been called into being to facilitate and expand this cooperation. This should then provide a basis for assessing the opportunities but also the pitfalls which exist in this field, the complementarities and also the gaps in current practices, and the policy issues that arise in relation to the further development of C2C. The aim will be to present the cities’ current practices and the support options available to them in a meaningful and comparable fashion, as the basis for a continuing process of collective learning which will be progressively further developed. It is hoped thereby to achieve an enhanced common understanding among all interested parties of the current state of C2C concepts and principles, as a basis for informed policy-making which takes full account of the cities’ perspective.